Dr.
Montague Ullman is past president of the Society of Medical Psychoanalysts, a
charter fellow of the Academy of Psycho­analysis, and Professor of Psychiatry
at the State University of New York Down­state Medical Center. He is also
Director of Community Mental Health at Mai­monides Medical Center in Brooklyn and the author of Behavioral
Changes in Pa­tients Following Stroke and other studies.

Jubilee: The recently
publicized seance at which Bishop Pike allegedly communicated with his deceased
son has focused attention on various psychic phenomena. As a longtime student
of parapsychology do you feel this field of research has proved itself, if not
as 'a scientific discipline, at least as a richly suggestive area of research?

Ullman: Serious
organizational sponsorship of studies and research in what at the time was
loosely referred to as psychic phenomena began with the establishment in London
in 1882 of the Society for Psychical Research, to be followed a short time
later by a similar group in this country. The
phenomena investigated included physical and mental mediumship, survival
evidence, precognition, telepathy and clairvoyance. With the founding of the
Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University in 1934 the research took a more
ostensibly scientific form by virtue of its emphasis on the use of quantitative
methods and statistical analysis. Despite, on the one hand, the accumulation of
the impressive, descriptive studies of spontaneous paranormal events and, on
the other, reports from, the laboratory yielding values of extraordinary
magnitude, the fact remains that parapsychological research has not as yet
achieved any significant degree of scientific respectability. Although the
field has always captured the imagination of some of the best scientific minds
of the past as well as the current scene (Crookes-physics, James­-psychology,
Freud-psychiatry, Herrick-neurology, Haldane­-biology, Eccles-neurophysiology,
Hardy-evolution, Hutchinson-­biology, Margenau-philosophy of science, and
Murphy-psychology) the Scientific Establishment qua Establishment has
maintained an oppositional stance. The organization of professional researchers
in the field has not been able, for example, to crack through on the question
of affiliate membership in the American Association for the Advancement of
Science, nor has anyone as far as I know succeeded in gaining Governmental
support for research in this area. Critics such as Hansel in his recent book,
and Price, earlier in Science, prefer hypotheses of fraud, bias, self-deception
and collusion to accepting the innovating impact of the data themselves. There
are, however, some beginning signs that aggressive skepticism, no matter how articulately
expressed, can no longer effectively contain the rising tides of experimental
data. Borrowing the tools of the biologist, the neurophysiologist and the
physicist, parapsychological research is moving towards the goal of working
with palpable data rather than statistical inference alone. In our own case we
have been using electroencephalographic monitoring techniques to study the
incorporation of extrasensory effects in dreaming. Others are using fine
physiological measures such as the plethysmograph to record minute autonomic
changes when extrasensory effects occur, Further signposts along the way
include the fact that in the past year psychiatric journals (Corrective
Psychiatry and Journal of Social Therapy and the International Journal
of Neuropsychiatry) devoted complete issues to a review of these
methodological and experimental advances. I have recently received word that
the First Moscow Congress on Parapsychology is planned for May 1968 and will
include wide representation from all scientific disciplines. I hope it will not
take a Russian parapsychological Sputnik to get us going as a nation in this
field.

Jubilee: In the Christian
mystical tradition there have been hundreds of cases reported of stigmatics,
but only an infinitesimally small proportion have been of men. Similarly, such
women as Dr. Murphy's own wife, Eileen J. Garrett, Gertrude R. Schmeidler and
Laura A. Dale have been in the forefront of research in parapsychology. Is this
significant? Does it say something about a differing psychosomatic structure in
women? Why has the typical medium been a woman?

Ullman: Physical stigmata
bear only a questionable relationship to psychical phenomena. The stigmata form
a rare type of psychosomatic disorder in which circumscribed vegetative changes
occur involving hemorrhage into the skin and where, by their appearance and
location, they have obvious symbolic significance. Because of the involvement
of the autonomic nervous system the stigmata appear as psychosomatic effects.
On the other hand, because of their obviously symbolic character they resemble
symptoms seen in conversion hysteria. The latter was considered, by the
ancients at any rate, as predominantly a female disorder. The name itself comes
from Greek roots denoting a "wandering of the womb." The names you
mention could be equally matched by distinguished male investigators like
Rhine, Pratt, Warcollier and Soal. There have also been many brilliant male mediums
(D. D. Home), although you are right in suggesting that they have been outnumbered
by the women. My own experience also suggests that women generally tend to be
less belligerently skeptical and more accepting of paranormal events. When I
address mixed audiences on the subject, it is generally women who seek me out
after the lecture to report validating personal experiences. Perhaps this does
derive from certain characterologic or even physiological factors as yet
unidentified, or perhaps it is simply due to the fact that women tend to deal
more directly with their own emotive processes than do men.

Jubilee: Do you think
that parapsychology might lead to a radical reconstruction of our notions of
space, time, energy and personality?

Ullman: I believe the
answer is yes, not because we can spell out the implications at the present time,
but rather because I think it is inevitable that sooner or later someone will
succeed in identifying intermediate steps leading from the observed event to
the kind of model that could link parapsychological data to what we know in
other fields, or else so transform our existing knowledge of these fields as to
enable us to bridge the present theoretical rift between psi events [psi is a
neutral term used to designate the range of parapsychological data] and all
other natural phenomena. The range of competing models extends from those
attempting to focus on the possibility of energy transfer at a micromolecular
level to those accounting for psi events as capricious intrusions by events
occurring in dimensions other than those familiar to us. Russian investigators
have been systematically concerned with the energy transfer aspects of the psi
event. Although their work has provided further negative evidence concerning
the operation of any known electromagnetic energies, it has pointed up the need
for a more rigorous investigation in this area than has characterized the
research up to the present. The weight of much past research, based on the
model set forth by Rhine, has too readily assumed a dualistic, mind-over-matter
character. This emphasis on the apparent freedom from time and space and the
ordinary laws of energy transfer as a major feature of psi events reflects more
the priori bias of the observer than it necessarily does the ultimate nature of
the events in question. Pursued in this way, parapsychological research has, in
my opinion, lent itself too ingenuously to those seeking scientific basis for
religious doctrine. It seems to me that the major religious concerns on the
nature of man and his ultimate destiny can conceivably remain just as much a mystery
and matter of belief were a breakthrough to be made in the area of psychical
research.

Jubilee: Might parapsychology
also illuminate our understanding of the nature of human community and human
conflict?

Ullman: These are broad
questions. Our Occidental culture tends very much to reinforce pragmatic and
role-defined contact among individuals at the expense of openly acknowledged
and directly experienced emotive processes. There is neither the skill nor the
investment made (except perhaps for certain exceptions like the Hopi Indians)
in the kind of acculturating experience that forces the child to end up with
feelings of closeness and the ability to take emotional support and contact for
granted. Psi events seem to break through under conditions making for distance
and alienation when such circumstances can no longer be tolerated and where an
acute stress arises, necessitating contact. The medium or sensitive is one who
has learned to transfer this random and capricious use of emergency into a way
of life. As things stand now, we tend to turn our back not only on psi events
generally, but on the usual vehicle for their manifestation, namely, dreaming.
Except for an insignificantly small channel open to the psychoanalyst's
ritualized professional concern, there are no open social channels for the
registering and sharing of and learning from our personal dream experiences.
For the most part our dreams are destined to die as transient personal
fantasies. Were dreams ever to assume any salience in our society and
considered for what they are, namely, vivid, metaphorically conceived
confrontations occurring within the individual on an issue of importance to
him, they would conceivably pave the way to an understanding of the link
between the social and the personal. The use of socially derived symbols for
the expression of attitudes and feelings provide us with a rich but untapped
approach to a deeper grasp of how the social institutions presented in the
dream foster idiosyncratic defensive maneuvers or nurture the residual creative
growth-enhancing potential of the individual.

Jubilee: Certain orthodox
Christians like Canon Charles Kingsley, Cardinal Manning and Baron von Hugel
believed in the existence of an immortal principle in animals. Has psychical
research contributed to our understanding of the animal "mind"?

Ullman: The age of
effective animal experimentation in animal psychology is about to begin. I say
this without meaning to derogate any of the very elaborate and sophisticated
animal research of the past, particularly the excellent studies of Pratt on the
homing of pigeons. The fact is, however, that they have not succeeded in
channels worthwhile pursuing. I have expressed myself hopefully because recent
research has tended to highlight the fact that we share with lower animals
certain physiological states which, in man at any rate, appear to facilitate
psi contact. I refer to the dreaming phase of the sleep-waking cycle. The
distinct physiological changes that characterize dreaming sleep in humans is found
in other animals. Since this phase of sleep has, in our experimental work as
well as in the in vivo situation, been associated with psi effects, it seems
reasonable to assume this might be a worthwhile lead to pursue with animals. In
the case of the latter the physiological factor involved in the Rapid Eye
Movement or dreaming phase of sleep can be more easily controlled and
manipulated.

Jubilee: Has your
openness to the real possibility of genuine psychic phenomena antagonized members
of your own profession? With the decline of a narrow behavioristic or monistic
psychology are professional psychologists more willing to entertain the idea of
psychic phenomena?

Ullman: Antagonized is
perhaps too strong a word. The only feedback I have been apt to get is from colleagues
who have been relatively close to me. Reactions vary from one in which, based
on their knowledge of me they are willing to make allowances for, or discount,
my insistence on legitimizing ESP to, at the other pole, and somewhat less
frequent, a situation where because of their knowledge of me they are willing
to temper some of their negativism or skepticism. I am happy to note, however,
that a change has come about quite recently. I would attribute it not to the
decline of behavioristic psychology (after all, even in dynamically oriented
psychology psychoanalysts after Freud did not measure up to his receptive and
interested attitude in psychic phenomena) but rather to the fact that the
quantitative accumulation of data is resulting in the qualitative
transformation in the response to such data. Furthermore, the techniques of
data gathering now result in more palpable forms of data than the purely
statistical inferences characteristic of the past. Finally, investigators
themselves have begun to command attention by virtue of their achievements in
other fields.

Jubilee: Is there
anything you would like to add concerning the religious dimension of
parapsychology?

Ullman: Without any
explicit or primary religious focus myself, my interest in the field has of
course brought me in contact with many whose religious concerns primarily
account for their involvement in parapsychological research. I think the
"apparent" religious dimension in parapsychological research has
stood in the way of its movement as a scientific discipline. By this I have
reference to, at a crude level, the exploitation of various spiritualist cults
of the data of psychical research in the service of instant contact with those
who have "passed over." At a more sophisticated level, I refer to the
emphasis experimenters took in this country, stressing the unconnectedness of
psi events to other natural phenomena. Much as psi events do differ from other
phenomena, and have to be apprehended in their difference, the assumption that
they differ absolutely is gratuitous and tends to close off potential
collaborative research. To the extent that psi research sheds further light on
the properties of life generally and human life specifically, I think it will
help close the gap between the way things are -and the way we want and need
them to be which, to my way of thinking, would be a contribution to the genuine
religious dimension of our lives.